The Lost Apothecary(34)
Gaynor cursed under her breath, frustration clear on her face. “Okay, well, so far nothing has come up. It’s no wonder your online search was unsuccessful. Let’s try this another way.” She typed one word into the search bar, apothecary, and then manually refined the search results on the left-hand side of the screen. She set the date to 1800 to 1850 and the region to London, England.
A few results appeared, and my heart jumped as I caught the headline of one newspaper article: “Offences of Deception and Murder, Middlesex.” But the article, dated 1825, seemed too late—and it turned out to be about a male apothecary who’d been killed after stealing a horse.
My shoulders slumped. “What else could we try?”
Gaynor pursed her lips to one side. “Well, we can’t give up on the newspaper search just yet. Maybe we need to nix the word apothecary and try some others, like Bear Alley. But there are countless other resources to search, too. For example, our manuscript database...” She trailed off as she flicked to a new webpage. “By definition, manuscripts include handwritten documents like journals, diaries, even family estate papers. It’s often very personal information. But our manuscript collection also includes some printed material—typescripts, printed logs and so on.”
I nodded, recalling this from my schooling.
Gaynor picked up a pen and began to twirl it between her fingers. “We have millions of manuscripts in our collection. But searching this collection poses its own problems. You see, the newspaper records are instantly available on-screen since they’ve been digitized, but the manuscripts must be ordered. You request them, wait in a queue, which may be a couple of days, and then the desk delivers the actual document for you to review.”
“So digging into this could take days.”
Gaynor nodded slowly, twisting her face, like a doctor delivering bad news to a patient. “Yes, if not weeks or months.”
The magnitude of such a search was exhausting to even think about, especially given that the story of the apothecary was little more than myth as it stood; what if the entire search was in vain, because there wasn’t even a real person to uncover? I sat back in my chair, defeated. It seemed I couldn’t sort truth from lie in any part of my life.
“Chin up,” Gaynor said, nudging my knee with her own. “You’re clearly intrigued by this sort of thing, which is rare in and of itself. I remember well my first week working at the library... I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved the old maps more than anyone else here. People like us need to stick together and keep at it.”
Keep at it. Though I didn’t know what, exactly, I wanted to find—or if there was even anything to find—one thing couldn’t be ignored: the door at the end of Back Alley aligned perfectly with the old maps. And whether the apothecary worked in the area or not, the idea of an old walkway or street, known only to those who lived two hundred years ago but still buried underneath the city, captivated me.
Maybe this was what Gaynor meant by the appeal of the search. I had no idea what lay behind the door—it was likely to be a crumbling mess of brick, filled with rats and spiderwebs—but if there was anything I knew about myself now that I didn’t know a few days ago, it was that looking inside wasn’t always comfortable. Which was exactly why I’d avoided thinking about James thus far, and why I hadn’t yet told my parents or anyone other than Rose about what he’d done. It was, in fact, why I’d distracted myself with the lost apothecary in the first place.
Gaynor and I exchanged phone numbers, and I let her know that I would be in touch if I wanted to request any manuscripts or further search the digitized newspaper records.
As I left the library, my phone showed it was just after nine o’clock. James would be landing any minute. And though I was discouraged by the fruitless search, I breathed in the warm London air and steeled myself as I made my way toward the Underground and Ludgate Hill, ready to face head-on what I could no longer choose to ignore.
As distraught as I’d been in the last few days, I felt more alive in London—enveloped in an old mystery, an old story—than I could remember feeling in years. I resolved to continue digging. To push through the dark and look inside of it all.
15
Eliza
February 8, 1791
After Lady Clarence rushed out of Nella’s shop, the air in the small room felt humid and hot, like it often did in the kitchen. The hair on my arms stood on end; I’d never heard anyone speak in the tones Nella and Lady Clarence had exchanged a moment ago.
Nella’s face twisted into a look of misery and fatigue. I could see how the weight of her work—and the demands of women like Lady Clarence—had carved lines into her forehead and sunk pockets into her cheeks. Faint wisps of smoke still curled in the air as she slumped to one side in her chair, concern splashed all over her face like spilled vinegar.
“Kill the mistress of a lord,” she mumbled, “or swing from the gallows?” She rolled her head to look into the fire, as though searching for what remained of her beetles. “Each choice is more hideous than the other.”
“You must remake the powder.” She did not ask for my opinion, but the words came out of me before I knew what I was saying. “It is the only option.”
She turned on me, her eyes crazed. “Easier than killing a woman? All my life, I have sought to help women. Indeed, it is the only part of my mother’s legacy that I have maintained with any measure of success.”